Help with backup strategy (on prem)

[volcs0]

I have 3-2-1 backups of my very-most-important stuff - family photos, videos, etc. I have multiple off-site redundant backups of these precious items.

 

I would like to also have a backup of my music, TV, and. movies. Yes, I know that many don't back up their media, preferring to rely on *arr software for reconstituting a crash. But my stomach is not that strong. I've spent 20 years curating and giving lots of love to these collections.

I have enough external hard drive space to back most of it up right now (~25Tb).

 

What is the best way to do this - and to sustain it going forward?

 

These are the two options I can think of:

1. Back up to the external hard drives via USB to my unRAID. 

2. I have a spare MacMini that I could set up as an end point for a continuously running backup on the home network. I'm not sure the best way to do this - maybe have the drives mounted as network shares via SMB and have backup software running that does daily incremental backups. 

3. I don't want to set up a completely separate unRAID server for mirroring, as others have suggested - mainly because I think it is overkill and I don't see the point in the expense of the parity and cache drives.

4. I don't want to use cloud backup - it would take months to seed the first one. And it would be too expensive.

 

Ideally, once a drive is filled, I could take it offsite (e.g., to my office) and leave it there.

 

Other thoughts? I'll sleep much better once this is done.

 

Thanks for the advice.

 

[trurl]

16 hours ago, volcs0 said:

I have 3-2-1 backups of my very-most-important stuff - family photos, videos, etc. I have multiple off-site redundant backups of these precious items.

me too

 

16 hours ago, volcs0 said:

don't want to set up a completely separate unRAID server for mirroring, as others have suggested - mainly because I think it is overkill and I don't see the point in the expense of the parity and cache drives.

parity and cache are not required. I have a backup server built from old parts and smaller disks I have accumulated from upgrading and upsizing disks in my main server. I rsync some of my less important stuff to it every month or so.

[volcs0]

On 10/13/2021 at 7:34 AM, trurl said:

me too

 

parity and cache are not required. I have a backup server built from old parts and smaller disks I have accumulated from upgrading and upsizing disks in my main server. I rsync some of my less important stuff to it every month or so.

Just to be clear - 

 

You have a backup unRAID without parity and cache? That sounds easy enough...

[trurl]

Actually I do have parity and cache in my backup server. But they are not required by Unraid so nothing preventing you from not having them.